Yemen

Yemen occupies the south-western corner of the Arabian Peninsula, where the land climbs from the hot Red Sea plain of the Tihamah into the highest mountains in Arabia. Monsoon rains water terraces of sorghum, coffee and qat on the highland slopes. Beyond the mountains the land drops towards the desert, and Wadi Hadhramaut cuts a long valley through a limestone plateau. Offshore lies Socotra, isolated for so long that many of its plants, among them the dragon’s blood tree, grow nowhere else.

Ancient Yemen was Arabia Felix, ‘fortunate Arabia’, enriched by frankincense and myrrh. The kingdom of Saba, linked in tradition to the Queen of Sheba, built the great dam at Marib, and Himyar followed. For centuries after the coming of Islam, Zaydi imams ruled the highlands, the Ottomans held parts of the country twice, and Britain took Aden in 1839 as a coaling port on the route to India. North and South Yemen developed separately and united in 1990.

The old city of Sanaa is a skyline of tower houses trimmed with white gypsum, and the mud-brick high-rises of Shibam have been called the Manhattan of the desert. Men wear the jambiya, a curved dagger, at the belt. The Red Sea port of Mocha gave its name to the coffee shipped from Yemen’s highlands from the fifteenth century. Coffee, honey from the Do’an valley, fish, and oil and gas from Marib and Shabwa have been the main earners, with money sent home from the Gulf.